IBM, AMD to collaborate on HPC, AI, hybrid cloud, confidential computing

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IBM and AMD said they will collaborate on security, open source software, standards and architectures for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence workloads.

The partnership between the two companies is likely to cement AMD's place in hybrid cloud environments and give more of a data center foothold in the enterprise. AMD's most recent earnings report highlighted momentum among data center and cloud customers as it competes against Intel. AMD's Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom segment third quarter revenue was $1.13 billion, up 116 percent year-over-year and 101 percent quarter-over-quarter. 

The two companies have been busy of late:

• AMD will acquire Xilinx for $35 billion
• AMD's $35 billion Xilinx purchase: Everything you need to know
• IBM's Q3 solid with strength in Red Hat, hybrid cloud
• IBM to spin off its managed infrastructure unit to focus on Red Hat, hybrid cloud; sees Q3 sales ahead of estimates

AMD and IBM are familiar with each other on multiple fronts. For instance, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster is an IBM alum. In addition, the two companies have links to GlobalFoundries, which manufactured AMD chips when it went fabless in 2008 and later bought IBM's processor business in 2014.

Specifically, AMD and IBM will make confidential computing, which encrypts data running on virtual machines on a hardware level, a priority. The two companies will also look to accelerate HPC and AI workloads in regulated industries and hybrid cloud deployments.

The companies said AMD and IBM researchers are now collaborating on joint development.